Monthly Archives: December 2011

Tax avoidance, though technically legal, is coming under increasing political pressure. This has reignited ideas of a general anti-avoidance rule. This sounds seductive but it can be fiendishly difficult to draw the line between unreasonable avoidance and legitimate tax planning. However, there may be a middle way.

In December 2010, the government set Graham Aaronson QC the task of investigating a General Anti Avoidance Rule (pdf). Together with a team including a small group comprising academic lawyers, judges and the Group Head of Tax at BP, he considered the following objectives:

Providing the Government with an effective means of deterring and countering tax avoidance.

Ensuring that the rules work fairly and would not erode the UK tax regime's attractiveness to business.

Ensuring that certainty about the tax treatment of transactions could be provided without undue compliance costs for businesses and individuals.

Keeping any increase in resource costs for HMRC to an acceptable level and ensuring that there would be a minimal need for resource to be diverted from other priorities.

Anti-abuse, not anti-avoidance

A year later, he has published his final report (pdf). Last mooted in 1998, this controversial idea is often conceived of as a blanket ban on tax avoidance. This definition, however, has been rejected by Aaronson and his team in favour of an anti-abuse rule. In Aaronson's own words, a “broad spectrum anti-avoidance rule would not be beneficial to the UK tax system” and he instead proposes “a moderate [GAAR] rule which does not apply to responsible tax planning, and is instead targeted at abusive arrangements”.

Safeguards for business

The report is very mindful of the second objective it had to consider – that it maintain a competitive tax environment to attract businesses. As such, four “safeguards” have been recommended:

An explicit protection for reasonable tax planning.

An explicit protection for arrangements which are entered into without any intent to reduce tax.

Placing upon HMRC the burden of proving that an arrangement is not reasonable tax planning.

Having an Advisory Panel, with relevant expertise and a majority of non-HMRC members, to advise whether HMRC would be justified in seeking counteraction under the GAAR.

Safeguard 3 is noteworthy, as previous notions of anti-avoidance rules have often included a clearance process requiring tax avoidance schemes to be pre-approved. The proposed rule will not give substantial power to HMRC, and the report notes that the “GAAR should be a shield for the tax system and not a weapon for HMRC”.

The letter of the law, no more

It represents a shift in focus from the letter to the spirit of the law. Arrangements that “make a mockery of the will of Parliament”, although technically legal, would be deemed abusive and blocked by the rule. Aaronson believes this could also help improve the quality of legislation by “encourag[ing] legislators, and drafters, to consider more carefully the principles behind proposed legislation.”

The rule would not replace existing statue, but would instead be an extra layer above it. It is envisaged, though, that it would allow for existing anti-avoidance provisions to be simplified and their number reduced.

Greater certainty…?

Aaronson hopes that the proposed legislation would create greater certainty in tax avoidance cases that go before the courts. Judges have increasingly tried “to stretch the [normal principles of statutory] interpretation… to achieve a sensible result” which has produced “considerable uncertainty in predicting the outcome of such disputes.” By formalising this purposive attitude towards the law by emphasising the principle behind legislation, judges should be more consistent.

The spirit of the times

All-in-all, this is a much subtler piece of legislation than many would have hoped or feared. Attitudes towards tax avoidance have been moving in this direction over the last decade. More purposive interpretations by the courts, increasing numbers of anti-avoidance provisions and the 2004 introduction of compulsory disclosure for schemes with the hallmarks of avoidance, have found their culmination in this report.

Update

As announced in the 2012 Budget, the GAAR (now rebranded the general anti-abuse rule) will be introduced in the 2013 Finance Bill.

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Salary sacrifice schemes, notably the Cycle to Work scheme, are about to get more expensive. Up until now purchases made under such schemes had been largely VAT-free. From 1st January 2012, that will change.

How it used to work

For the uninitiated, salary sacrifice schemes work by giving up a portion of your pre-tax pay for a benefit, e.g. a bicycle, voucher, or pension contributions. As such, you reduce your income tax and national insurance liabilities, with the latter benefitting both you and your employer. The business has also been able to claim input VAT on the item being purchased in lieu of wages, so making these purchases effectively VAT-free.

How it will work

However, a recent judgment by the European Court of Justice has decreed that input VAT for purchases through salary sacrifice schemes does not relate to taxable supplies made by businesses. This means that businesses will no longer be able to claim input VAT on these purchases, a cost likely to be borne by employees. This affects supplies under salary sacrifice schemes that are subject to VAT, such as the Cycle to Work scheme, vouchers (excluding childcare) and standard-rated food and catering. Pension contributions and private-use cars, however, will be largely unaffected.

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Liked the article? Then sign up for our monthly round-up of the latest tax news, or click the RSS icon to subscribe to our RSS news feed.